Polar launches its own smart scale

After a couple of years of producing fitness trackers, Polar has turned up at CES 2016 with its first intelligent scale, the Polar Balance Connected Smart Scale. The company has now joined the likes of Withings and Fitbit, both of which produce fitness trackers as well as smart scales.

The Polar Balance scale features a large display to ensure that the digits are easily readable, and a splash-proof glass design. It can be used by up to 10 different people. The scale works as a standalone device but can also be used with Polar’s wearables or its Polar Flow app and web service which make up an essential part of the service.

The scale can do more than just measure your weight. Once you have set a personal goal, the app and web service will offer you motivational guidance on how to reach your daily activity goal. The app works on the basis that 60% of the excess calories should be cut from your diet and 40% should be burned with activity. Daily activities such as steps, distance and calories burned that are recorded from one of Polar’s fitness trackers and the food intake you record in Polar Flow will then be synced with the scale.

The service will provide you with advice on nutrition and exercise and follow your weight and BMI trends via graphs. This will allow you to learn how chasing your daily habits can improve your well-being and make it easier for you to reach your weight goal.

Measuring body functions comes naturally to Polar, so tapping into weight management is a natural next step for us,” explains Jukka Jaatinen, Director, New Business Areas from Polar. “We’ve combined our existing technology and know-how with the weight management concept to come up with a unique solution. Polar Balance is motivating and easy to use – for losing and maintaining weight. We want to give our users the best possible tools to help them achieve and maintain a healthy and balanced lifestyle.”

A promising aspect of the feature-set is the Weight Loss Speedometer, a graphic that gives you an easy way to see if you’re on track to reaching your goals. The Speedometer is also the main distinguishing feature of this scale compared to its competitors. It should be noted that both the Withings Smart Body Analyzer and Fitbit Aria scales also include body fat measurements – something that is not offered by the Polar scale. The accuracy of these body fat measurements should, however, be taken with a grain of salt as they can be inconsistent and innacurate at times. If you are interested in tracking your body fat with more precision, we suggest reading our article on the Skulpt Aim.

You can use the Polar Blance scale with Polar Loop, Loop 2, Loop Crystal, A360, M400 and V800. It is also compatible with the Polar H7 Bluetooth Smart heart rate sensor and connects with the world’s largest food, nutrition and calorie database (iOS only) – MyFitnessPal.